Tag Archives: Patience

A friend of mine lived in the country. He had kids and they were growing up and one of his daughters got involved in ranching. Raising cattle. She was just getting started in this work and she was put in charge of moving a herd of cattle.
She asked her father to help because he was an experienced rider and he was also a veterinarian. And he was her Dad.

Moving the herd happened in the dark of night, just before dawn. A dozen or so riders had instructions from this young woman and the move began. They walked or trotted their horses by the edge of the herd to keep them together and going at a speed they could control.

My friend’s horse was trotting along fine, then tripped and flung my friend down a slope onto his back. He called out for help and a couple of riders came by. He was trying to tell if he was hurt, and his daughter rode up.

She leaned down from her horse and scolded him in a whisper. “Dad. Get up. You’re embarrassing me!”

I love that story. That girl had so much on her mind and wanted this job to go well so badly that when her father got thrown from his horse she could only think about how it would affect the job.

When St Peter heard Jesus say that He would be killed for what He was doing, Peter said, “No!”. In one way Peter said, “Be quiet, Jesus, You’re embarrassing me.” Peter was saying “I want things to go this way: more success, bigger crowds. Don’t talk of failure.”

What do we do when things go wrong? What do we do when there’s pain? How about when suffering goes from short term to long term? God wants us to deal with suffering. It’s a part of life. When we think we can control our lives, we make sure suffering is not part of it. Suffering makes us look bad. It ruins our image. It feels awful.

What do we do?

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was a psychologist who worked with dying people. She came up with an understanding of how people cope with having an illness that will probably end in death. Death is the biggest way of all that things go wrong. Most of us see it as the worst thing that will happen. The biggest embarrassment.

There are five stages people go through when things go terribly wrong. To keep this short, I will say only the first and the last. The first is denial. “No! This is not happening!” The last one is acceptance. As Jesus put it, “Not My will, Father, but Yours be done.”

Any time things go wrong we can bet our first reaction is “No!”. If we are believers, if we pray, and ask for help, that begins to change. We’ll get to “Your will, not mine be done.”

There’s a reason to accept suffering, any kind. Some day we’ll have to accept death. In the mean time we have to accept things like where we were born, how we were treated as children, what we look like, the traffic is, our jobs, our health, you name it.

What do we see when we look in the mirror? Do we see our failures? Blemishes? The ways we’re not good enough?

What do we feel when we enter a room full of people? Unworthy? That we have to hide who we are or what we did? That our jobs aren’t good enough or our kids aren’t bright enough or our bank accounts aren’t big enough?

If we feel that kind of embarrassment about ourselves, we try to hide. Or we look for something to cover it. Some pleasure. Some fantasy. We drink, we spend, we judge others. Anything to make us feel less embarrassed about who we are.

These things that deny the pain, that distract or cover over our unhappiness actually do work. The world is filled with ways of denying reality. They do take away the pain.

What they don’t do — what they cannot do — is heal us. Denial never heals. Never. It only conceals.

God wants healing for us. Healing comes with acceptance. Healing comes when we accept reality as it is, not as we’d like it to be. As soon as I can accept my life as it is, I find freedom. The things I was afraid of lose power.

We all can spend a lot of time and energy covering up our embarrassment. We hope people will like us, and include us and respect us.

Hasn’t that been what some people in the Church did when the sins of priests were reported? Deny. Hide. Don’t families do the same with the things they don’t want known? Businesses? Yup. Everybody does it.

There’s a saying in Italian: “bella figura”. It means “beautiful face”. When we put the preservation of the beautiful face above the truth, we lie. We deny. “Dad, you’re embarrassing me.”

There was nothing beautiful about Jesus on the cross. Nothing. Horrible to look at. Horrible, but three days later, He rose. He filled the world with glory. It’s the glory that comes from acceptance. From trust and honesty.

When we face reality instead of denying it, we pass through suffering into freedom. At first the truth embarrasses us. Then it sets us free.

A thing about broken trust & silence – The entire thing with broken trust, is that when the trust is broken, it doesn’t matter what one says, but rather what one does (actions) to fix the trust. When trust is broken, do we believe what we are hearing from the one who has broken the trust? Or, do we respond better over time with the actions they have taken? We can demand an answer, BUT if the answer is silence? Will we be satisfied? Or do we demand an answer that WE want to hear?

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’ – “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.” Matt 11:18-19

Because often times, we don’t like to hear things that may hurt and react in ways that are NOT the fruits of righteous anger.

I went to grab a bowl from my cabinet for dinner tonight and when I did, I found this…

Before finding this, and keep in mind it was one of my favorite bowls, I had received an email from my daughter’s teacher in regards to her struggling with behavior issues again, requesting a meeting. My youngest daughter is on the Autism Spectrum and problems arise when her routine changes.

Before receiving the email, I had been struggling with other family issues pertaining to my oldest daughter, and my middle daughter is struggling with both issues with her sisters on top of being a very emotional preteen. SO , things have been slightly tense trying to carry it all, not very easily, and coming to realize that I can not fix anything, but I can hope in our Lord and pray.

My favorite bowl. When I pulled it down and noticed the bottom had fallen out, all I could think of was, “This too?”. I’m not a materialistic person. The loss of the bowl was a split second of loss, as I got back to the real issues with my girls, which also, I was not able to fix today. So I pray and place it all once again into our Lord hands.

I sat down and pondered for a moment of all that was taking place. Got back up an pulled that bottomless bowl from the trash and was reminded to cling to our Lord. Stop struggling.

When things in this world are tough, and everything seems to go so bad that the bottom falls out, cling to our Lord even tighter and don’t let go. When the bottom falls out, your left with the top. And that is how a “halo” is made.

Sister Faustina wrote of her experiences at the behest of the Lord Jesus:
My daughter, I demand that you devote all your free moments to writing about My goodness and mercy. It is your office and your assignment throughout your life to continue to make known to souls the great mercy I have for them and to exhort them to trust in My bottomless mercy. (1586)

“O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of Mercy for us, I trust in You.”

And this.. is the side of that favorite bowl. His word was not broken.

Its not often a new song will move me in such a way, but this one has. I was on my way to cover for someone who could not make it to Adoration this morning, I heard this song, and it put into perspective, my entire life and relationship with our Lord. It moved me to tears, as only He is constantly in my thoughts. When I arrived at Adoration in front of the tabernacle, the song played on. I know where this song is from, but the lyrics and the music fit, perfectly. Its Christina Perri’s, A Thousand Years. From this day forward, every time I hear this song, I will remember Him and the way this song played at the most perfect time and sing it to Him, with Him.

Heart beats fast
Colors and promises
How to be brave
How can I love when I’m afraid To fall
But watching you stand alone
All of my doubt
Suddenly goes away somehow
One step closer

I have died everyday
waiting for you
Darlin’ don’t be afraid
I have loved you for a
Thousand years
I’ll love you for a
Thousand more

Time stands still
beauty in all she is
I will be brave
I will not let anything
Take away
What’s standing in front of me
Every breath,
Every hour has come to this
One step closer

I have died everyday
Waiting for you
Darlin’ don’t be afraid
I have loved you for a
Thousand years
I’ll love you for a
Thousand more

And all along I believed
I would find you
Time has brought
Your heart to me
I have loved you for a
Thousand years
I’ll love you for a
Thousand more

One step closer
One step closer

I have died everyday
Waiting for you
Darlin’ don’t be afraid,
I have loved you for a
Thousand years
I’ll love you for a
Thousand more

And all along I believed
I would find you
Time has brought
Your heart to me
I have loved you for a
Thousand years
I’ll love you for a
Thousand more

EDIT TO ADD 9/5/2018

Its taken me a while to add this into this post. When this took place, my heart was struck and overcome by so much. This video was taken by me, when my sister took me on a little pilgrimage, to St. Norbert College, September 20, 2016 · De Pere, WI. The second we walked in, it was silent, and all of a sudden, the people began to play.

“with the Lord, ‘a day’ can mean a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day” (II Peter 3:8).

“I Got You” are three words I heard in my heart on Sunday at Mass. Not in any way to poke fun, but rather strengthening my soul as to how we are all in Christs hand no matter how many times a day we forget that truth.

Last Thursday, I came home to find a 20 day notice posted on my door from our trust company that said we had 20 days to vacate the property as it was being sold at auction on July 7th. My husband and I had been in negotiations with our bank for over two years, trying to get a loan modification and it seemed this was the end of the line. I had been looking to rent a home for us for the past few months and even packed up a lot of belongings just in case. Every house we liked and hoped to rent, was given to another family and we just couldn’t find any place to rent. There was even one case where we DID find a place, but it turned out the person showing us the house and who wanted close to two thousand dollars security deposit, was not even the owner and had no right to rent the house in the first place! God was with us that day as the true owner came to that property, during the time we were going to sign the papers to rent it and hand over some money.

We had 20 days left to pack up the entire house, find another to rent, be approved to rent it and move. Friday came and the only thought in my heart was to just leave everything we didn’t need. Take the clothing the children would need and some things that could not be replaced and just go where our Lord was leading us. I wrote about this once before here “Where Is Home“. Saturday came along with 5 registered letters from the trust company, stating the same 20 day notice.

Sunday morning I woke up early to attend the first Mass of the day. I wanted to be completely immersed in the Mass and let the children to sleep so I could attended Mass alone without distraction. I was so confused about this situation. I had just been given the task of taking over recruiting souls for our Adoration Chapel. I had been asked to start a bible class for teen girls. I had been invited to become a class leader for Vacation Bible Study, asked to join The Legion of Mary and so many other activity’s at my parish, that losing our shelter was nothing to stand in the way of STILL being able to perform these duty’s. But! I couldn’t figure out why our Lord was opening up these doors, and I couldn’t even find shelter for my family.

As I sat and prayed to our Lord for guidance, I looked up at His cross and heard the words “I Got You”. It strengthen my heart and soul. I knew I wouldn’t let any of my personal struggles get in the way. It didn’t bother me anymore. I just accepted it and knew He had me and since He had me, I have everything I could ever need.

Monday came and so did another registered letter. This time from the bank. I opened it and here the bank was telling us, we had been approved for our loan modification. I was VERY puzzled! The trust company was just telling us something completely different! I went to Adoration to pray, when I got home, my husband had just hung up with the bank and confirmed the miracle. The house was ours and the trust company took the house off the auction block. The bank granted our loan modification ensuring we no longer had to move, nor negotiate with them any longer. Two plus years of house limbo and jumping through hoops, was over.

I meant every word in the post “Where Is Home” and I will for eternity be grateful to our Lord for opening my eyes to what is important in all of this. My Country wasn’t going to save us. My family wasn’t going to save us. No one here could save us, but only our faith in God and love for Him above all things. Patience, Fortitude and Perseverance.

All praise and all thanksgiving be Yours Almighty Father. For ever and ever. Amen